Ever feel paranoid about dropping your MacBook? The smart guys at Case-mate have a simple, yet effective solution to keep a grip on your 13″ Apple bundle of joy.

The Case-Mate Handle-it for MacBook is an easy to install handle accessory for your Apple notebook.

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In one of my recent blogs on the X800, I mentioned that I thought the unit E-TEN sent me was defective. It was.  They sent me a replacement unit, and I have some interesting news regarding its battery life.

What a difference a new device makes!!

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I hate anti-virus software, mainly because it slows my computer down to a crawl and keeps on badgering me with pesky pop-ups. But it certainly has its place, especially if you like to download a lot of stuff and occasionally visit dodgy websites (get your mind out of the gutter, I’m talking about underground file sharing sites!).

Luckily I’ve recently moved to Mac OS 10.5 as my main computing environment, so I don’t have to worry about viruses, key loggers and all that jazz. But if you’re a Windows user and have the same aversion as I do to anti-virus software, you should definitely give this SMH story a read: Some viruses come re-installed in everyday gadgets.

The article talks about a disturbing phenomenon of viruses that are being preloaded onto gadgets before they leave the factory floor, some accidentally, some maliciously.

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Sorry for the vast number of deal posts recently. When the economy hits the skids - it’s your time to take advantage. Need a new computer? Kids hogging the family PC? Check out this hot deal - powerful enough for home or office. Free shipping (select 3 to 5 day shipping to get the freebie) and 2GB of included RAM make it an even better buy. Sorry, Dell has expired this deal (details of what you missed moved to the next page.

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This past weekend I took on a new project, or really two projects – upgrading the RAM and hard drive in my 17” Macbook Pro, then taking the “old” hard drive and putting it into a 13” Macbook belonging to my other half. After researching a lot of information online (I love Google searches), I made some decisions about how to proceed with the updates, gathered the pieces, and started into the process.

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I first heard about the Sling Box on Mobility Today. Dave Ciccone was in the process of reviewing a beta version of WM Sling Box client, and posted a video review of what he was looking at. I thought that the idea of a Sling Box was right on the money: I’m in a strange city on business/on vacation/etc., and I want to watch (what ever); but its not on here/on an unknown channel/blacked out/etc.

Enter the Hava Gold. With it, you can watch YOUR TV, anywhere you can get an Internet connection.  Does the Hava Gold give you what you want, or does it provide a gilded experience?  Let’s take a quick look and see how it goes…

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I received the UltraLapSR today and here’s the unboxing! It took a while to get here, but that’s because Zareason does the right thing and thinks of the customer first! Walk with me as I unbox this beauty!

Building Linux hardware so you don’t have to. I like that!

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[Note: This is the second part of my look at the Toshiba Qosmio.  For my unboxing and initial impressions, take a look at Part 1]

When I first started looking at the Qosmio laptop, I thought I was going to have a panic attack.  There were just so many different features here.  How was I possibly going to discuss them all?  Was I in over my head?  In fact, I came close to wondering whether I should have asked for it at all.  Yikes!  Talk about a crisis of confidence.  Luckily, I had a chance to discuss this with Judie, who put it all in perspective.  “Just talk about your impressions…your impressions.”  She said.  And with that last phrase, “your impressions” echoing in my head, I set out to take a look at the Toshiba Qosmio G45-AV690 multimedia laptop.

The Qosmio is decidedly NOT the MacBook Air.  In fact, I would call it the “anti-Air”.   Is that a bad thing?  Not at all.  Taken together, the Air and the Qosmio really highlight the difference between mobility and portability.  Mobility offers the opportunity to access your data from anywhere at anytime; often at the cost of usability or other functions.  Portability allows you to carry everything you need from point A to point B, even if you cannot easily access that data before reaching point B.

To put it another way, the Air takes a shoebox and says put all of the features you can fit into this box.  The Qosmio, which is a portable laptop, looks at a pile of features, takes them all and builds a box around them.  Trust me, with a 17 inch screen and weighing in at 10 pounds, you are not likely to confuse this portable device for a mobile one.

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Introduction
Last fall, the Palm Centro was launched upon the U.S. on the Sprint network. Judie did a review of it and covered everything from the unboxing to her impressions of the device. Rather than repeat covering the basics of this device, I’m going to recommend that you take a look at her review here and here for a basic overview of using the Centro. Today, I plan to talk about the Centro on AT&T’s GSM network, AT&T highlights and additions to the Centro, and my impressions of the device and service.

Most import, for some folk, is the fact that Centro appears on the AT&T network in a brand new color – Glacier White. You’re either going to love the white with green combination or you’re going to hate it. I actually find it kind of interesting.

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Now, Open Source software has been running on routers for quite sometime, however most routers like the Linksys WRT54GL have limited resources. They have limited ram, limited CPU and limited on board storage. This limits greatly what can be done with the router software wise. So, eventually, you run up against a wall with what you can do with the router. Even if you can get the software setup on the router, sometimes it seems like it’s just slow or you wish it was just faster than it is now. David Samms and New World Data Systems based here in Gahanna, a Columbus, OH suburb, aim to change that.

PC Engines is the maker of the ALIX system board this router is based on. Now, as a hacker, you can still buy one of these boards on your own and then figure out how to get some software installed on it like Linux or FreeBSD, but for small companies, non profits and others who have to have a reliable router/firewall and don’t have the time to setup a ALIX board, they usually go to a Linksys or Dlink or something similar . There’s nothing wrong with a Linksys or Dlink, but what if you wanted your router to do more? If you have a WRT54GL, then you can, however those are getting harder to find and even then, they are limited. New World Data Systems has now taken the ALIX 2c1 board and put it in an enclosure with a 802.11g wireless card, a 40 GB hard disk and installed pfSense. The pfSense software is a fork of the m0n0wall. M0n0wall is based on FreeBSD. The pfSense project has taken m0n0wall and added a port of OpenBSD’s packet filter and many other features that are not a part of m0n0wall. What does this mean to you and me? A pfSense based router is probably one of the most powerful and secure routers a small business can use.

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